Over the last three decades, I have visited the
Berkshires of Western Massachusetts on several occasions. On each vacation, I stop at The Mount, the turn-of-the-century country home of
novelist Edith Wharton. Each time, I find something new to appreciate.
Sometimes it’s because of the different perspectives of the various guides to
the home. Sometimes, as part of the ongoing restoration of the place, it’s
because some new facet of this pioneering female fiction writer has been
discovered.
But it’s hard to get away from the beauty of the
whole place, created under the watchful, demanding eye of Ms. Wharton. The architecture
of the building itself if a marvel of symmetry and sleight-of-hand.
But outside, in the back, the gardens convey their
own magic. Indeed, Wharton herself saw them as a series of outdoor
rooms, designed to harmonize with the house itself.
The novelist’s niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand, a self-styled "landscape gardener," signed
up to make the property harmonize with her aunt’s vision of what a natural backdrop should be. In this, she admirably succeeded.
